Background to the Operette

In a letter to Pietro Pietro Giordani dated 4 September 1820 Leopardi announces he has “drafted” “some satirical prose”, “almost by way of vengeance against the world, and also almost virtue”: this was a first step toward the Operette morali.

His desire to write satire about “present customs” is stated in the Disegno letterario of 1819-20:

 

Dialoghi satirici alla maniera di Luciano, ma tolti i personaggi e il ridicolo dai costumi presenti o moderni, ... insomma piccole commedie, ... le quali potrebbero servirmi per provar di dare all’Italia un saggio del suo vero linguaggio comico che tuttavia bisogna assolutamente creare, ...

Satyrical dialogues in the style of Lucian, but without the characters and the ridicule of present  or modern customs ... in other words brief comedies ...  that could serve me to try and give Italy a taste of its true comical language which must however absolutely be created.

And again in the Zibaldone of 27 July 1821 (pp. 1393-4):

A volere che il ridicolo primieramente giovi, secondariamente piaccia ... deve cadere sopra qualcosa di serio, e d’importante. ... Ne’ miei dialoghi io cercherò di portar la commedia a quello che finora è stato proprio della tragedia, cioè i vizi dei grandi, i principii fondamentali delle calamità e della miseria umana, gli assurdi della politica, ... Così a scuotere la mia povera patria, e secolo, io mi troverò avere impiegato ... le armi del ridicolo ne’ dialoghi e novelle Lucianee ch’io vo preparando.

If we want ridicule to have a beneficial effect, and that it be liked ... first there must be an important, serious, event ... in my dialogues I shall try to bring comedy to that which was tragedy, that is to say the vices of the great, the fundamental principals behind human calamity and misery, the absurdity of politics ... So as to shake my poor country, and century, I shall employ ... the weapons of ridicule used by Lucian in the work I am preparing.

Between 1820 and 1821 Leopardi then drafted some explicitly “militant” “prosette” against the “century”, “politics” and “present civilization” (a characteristic that in the Operette will be partly softened, because Leopardi came to recognise in indifferent Nature, and not just in bad human relations, the cause of the constitutional unhappiness of man): Dialogo ... Filosofo greco, Murco senatore romano, Popolo romano, Congiurati; Dialoghi tra due bestie p. e. un cavallo e un toro; Dialogo di un cavallo e un bue; and the very interesting Novellas: Senofonte e Niccolò Machiavello and Dialogo Galantuomo e Mondo.